August 2005

~DAN ASHER . . NEW POWER

DAN ASHER: UNDERDOG, no more.

I heard that the MARTOS GALLERY, located in Chelsea . . was showing some DAN ASHERS at the Independent Art Fair of last month, and that the work had even attracted some serious media attention, specifically: the NEW YORK TIMES.

that’s so cool . . that Dan’s work could rise above the usual suspects in a cutting edge fair like that. though I’m not surprised, in an increasingly over-populated art world of ‘wannabes’ . . I had no doubt, Dan’s singular intensity was always going to prevail.

so I swung by the gallery, and sure enough . . DAN has found a serious platform here. TAYLOR TRABULUS, the Martos Gallery director . . who personally seems to be very interested in Dan and his world – told me that the gallery will be mounting a major show for DAN, this coming NOV 2014 – and she is working closely with Dan’s executor, BEN BERLOW to make this happen.
Taylor was kind enough to provide me with some images – close to the type of pieces that were shown at the Independent, all larger-sized oil stick, or pastel on paper – from the early 80s.

guess the art world’s best kept ‘dirty little secret’ – that everybody who’s anybody owns a few, and they are looking to make a killing . . is secret – no more.

DAN always knew that his day would come !!
a veritable ‘live wire’, if there ever was one – the fact that mainstream support, translate: the not very inspired ‘critics’ who dominated the scene in the 80s/90s – eluded him in his lifetime, only fueled his frustration, while stoking his firecracker personality & uniquely powerful . . creativity.

a contemporary of JEAN MICHEL’s, they were close friends – who lacked Basquiat’s charismatic charm, and back story – DAN nonetheless had that great vibrant 80s ‘juice’ in no short supply. his greatness went over a lot of people’s heads, esp when his obstinate & contrary character kicked in.

but that was Dan, hard-wired from day one, and it’s just this, his very personal primal scream at life, that explodes to life in everything he touched – be it the pencil or ink drawings, oil stick or pastels, the early 70s black & white BOB MARLEY photographs, on through . . his great 90s iceberg & extreme wrestling documentary color photography series.
from the moment his brain engaged – no mater the format or cause – Dan’s huge internal ‘rush’ of self-expression, bubbled-up, and made . . ‘CONTACT’.
his impulsive non-stop creative urge took flight, and as you can see from the above samples, it was total – ‘touch down’.